Software Journal

I migrated to a Mac a few months ago, just to try out the “other side”, although I have had an iPod and an iPad prior, and a Mac many many many years ago.

Well, the first thing that you have to do within a few hours of getting your Mac is to install Mac Office, so your Microsoft distance usually lasts only a few hours anyway. And then comes the next slight “annoyance” – Mac Office by default opens recent document every time you open your Mac Office application. So, you go to a client site 1, open slide deck 1, close the document, close Microsoft PowerPoint. Then you go to client site 2, and open Microsoft PowerPoint to launch slide deck 2, and oops, it opens slide deck 1. Why? Well, in Mac Office, that is the default. Applications open recently closed documents when being relaunched. This isn’t just a Mac Office default, but default for many applications on the Mac! Of course, you can turn this thing off for Mac Office.

As Eric Dasque over at frenchguys.com teaches us, we can simply open a terminal, and type in the following commands, and that should take care of it.

This kind of “terminal manipulation” isn’t for everyone, but is a workaround if you need one. (There is also a system preference to make this take affect at the entire system level, but users report that that does not fix this specific problem, event though it really should in theory.) Die hard Mac fans will point out why the default behavior is the way it is. Die hard PC fans may simply snicker. But the underlying issue is that no default serves everyone. So, then, the question becomes if the user can configure the defaults easily. If they have to navigate some complicated menu, or copy paste and do things in a “terminal”, when the only terminal they knew until then was the one with Tom Hanks, then they are not going to be so happy.